Glassdoor.com, the Web site where employees can write reviews about their company or CEO or post and research salaries, has been garnering a lot of attention in the blogging world lately. I spoke with Tim Besse, VP of Product and Marketing, to get the scoop on the site’s success.
Tell us about Glassdoor and why this site was created.
Glassdoor aims to let people find out what it’s really like to work at a company. It collects reviews, ratings, and salary reports anonymously from employers. In order to see what everyone else has contributed, you must contribute yourself.
We launched about a month ago, and the site was founded a year ago by myself and two other people, Richard Barton, the founder of Expedia, and Robert Hohman, current Glassdoor CEO and former CEO of Hotwire. We read a recent Harris survey that said 2 out of 3 people starting a job say that it turned out to be not what they expected. We set out to solve that problem. Our employer reviews essentially mean that you no longer need a friend that works on the inside of a company to get more detailed information.
How do you determine the validity of the posted content?
We have a team of people who read every single submission on the site. The law of large numbers comes into play, and you begin to see themes and consistencies between the reviews. Because we require a validated email address, you can’t “sink” an employer by rating them poorly repeatedly. We also keep bad apples off the site to prevent systemic abuse.
How successful has the site become?
The site has succeeded all my expectations. We’re bleeding into different sectors and jobs every day.
Has Glassdoor received financial support?
The summer of last year the founders each put in some seed money. In November 2007 we took $3 million of professional money from Benchmark Capital.
What is your revenue model?
We don’t intend to charge for the salary or the review content. We’ve built a free service, and it’s going to stay free. The model has to be a media/advertising model, and we intend on selling ads and getting into partnerships.
Has your site been a real agent of change within any of the companies that are reviewed?
Yes, in our own company. Knowing that most of our own 15 employees would go onto Glassdoor and post their salaries, we exercised a lot of care to make sure the money was fair. I do know that in the instance of other companies, a well-known CEO at a large hardware company in the Bay Area has spent quite a lot of time on the site researching the reviews of his competitors because it’s giving him some insight into the issues they are facing and how his company can do things better.
Any plans for Glassdoor in the next 6 months?
We’re mainly focused on collecting content right now. Some future plans involve taking that content and exploring it in different ways, like the salary portion of the site. You’ll be able to take that data and spin it depending on geography, years of experience, type of company.
We also have created an employer advisory channel where we invite employers to join the panel and contribute. Employers will actually get to put in their own feedback in terms of change and future plans.
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